HiFiMAN's EF100 is a good amplifier and DAC for the price. It offers excellent value, especially with a setup where you can take full advantage of its speaker amplifier. This device is just perfect once tasked with multiple things. It will give you plenty of volume with most small speakers even though the amplifier is relatively small, and it is no slouch when it comes to driving headphones either. It can power pretty much any headphone on the market and pairs well with HifiMAN's recent planar magnetic offerings. Whether the amplifier is worth it to you depends greatly on your preference in tonality. The DAC sections sound quite good once you disable all enhancements, but it is not quite up there with those integrated into other mid-end DAC/amp offerings.

The EF100 should be on your shortlist if you want a natural-sounding tube-based amplifier with some slight warmth to it. Its hybrid design also means that it has plenty of power for medium impedance headphones. We totally dig its multi-purpose design and the fact that it can power small bookshelf speakers as well.